Masada Sunrise

There was a trip heading to Masada for the sunrise the following morning, and Rozanne had been strongly recommended it, so we were up and on the bus at 3:00am. We had our favourite bus driver Alon, who we'd spent a bit of time with over the last week or so. He was an ex-Orthodox Jew, and was currently writing a book about life after religion, called Dangerous Curves but I'll come back to him later.

Masada is an ancient fortification built by Herod the Great on the top of an isolated rock plateau. The story goes that during the Roman rule of Jerusalem a group of Jewish rebels called the Sicarii slaughtered a Roman garrison and fled to and settled the mountaintop of Masada. The Romans pursued them, and laid siege via a huge siege ramp (~114m) that they built in 2-3 months, and brought down the walls with a battering ram. What they found when they broke down the walls inside was all 960 inhabitants dead. They had committed mass suicide.

Masada from a drone, image courtesy of Google. That track up the side is called the snake track and we walked it.

Anyway, the walk up was challenging, especially in the dark. I had my trusty flashlight with velcro pouch on my hip, so I looked extra cool. The walk took about 40 minutes to get to the top, you start at a couple of hundred meters below sea level, and the top is right at 0m. The view from the top though, as the sun came up was spectacular.

The view from the top of Masada

Iphone camera is either too light or too dark but this was a good photo of Rozanne & I

The ancient crumbling structures as the sun was coming up

On the way back to Jerusalem we stopped off at the Dead Sea for another swim. Now Rozanne hadn't really read much about the area, so luckily I had a tourist brochure with me, and she was able to catch up during her swim.

She fell for the same revitalizing water trick I got Dad with, and dunked her head under the water too. This photo was taken before that happened, as she was blinded by the salt and I had to lead her out of the water.

Just a bit of light reading

Schnitzel & chips in the sun with Annabelle & Rozanne